RSS FeedTue 2 Dec 2008
What is the best way to have permalinks structured?
Did I make the right choice?
If I were to do it over (when I start my next site) would I do the same thing?
How hard would it be to change to a different structure?
What about all the links to specific articles both throughout the interweb and my own deep links?
What are some of the pros and cons of different methods?
These are some of the questions that I have been thinking about from time to time and lately I have again been hit with this “second guess” bug. Before I ever started this site, I read this post about SEO Friendly URLS and agreed that it would be better to use something besides the “?p=123″ method.
Based on the information in that post, the fact that it was the method used by John Chow, and since I had never done anything like this before, I went ahead and used the name only permalink structure that my posts currently have.
I have noticed that many of my fellow bloggers use a /month/day/title method for their posts and wonder if perhaps this might not be a bit better choice. I’m not sure what would happen if I tried to give two posts the same title, but I’m not sure I want to find out (if I haven’t already done it) and with the date/name based method, this wouldn’t be as big of an issue as they would have different /month/day/ portions in their URL.
On the other hand, are there SEO benefits or drawbacks to one method over the other and how about as far as professionalism and image? Do any of these things even matter that much?
It’s probably too late to change it now, but I want to open up the comments to anyone who reads this post as to your thoughts on this issue and what your recommendation would be. Also, what experience have you had with any particular permalink structure?
Like so many things in the world of blogging, there probably isn’t one best way, but I just figured I’d see what kind of discussion we can get going and perhaps validate my current setup or know what I would do differently next time. Oh, and I’m pretty sure that changing from one method to another on an established site like this one is probably out of the question.
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You’ve raised some interesting points.
I think it’s important to consider these isses before starting the blog, because it can be messy (or too hard) to switch from one type of URL to another.
I’ve avoided the /month/day/ URL structure, because the URL can immediately give people the impression that the content is dated (and the concept of removing posting dates from posts is another topic…).
I’ve used a /category/subcategory/ structure for my permalinks, as I believe it offers better SEO benefits, due to the category name being in the URL, and it also provides a more logical and human-readable URL that gives the reader more context.
If you decide to change your URL structures, some blogging engines do support it, and will use 301 redirects from old URLs to new URLs. Alternatively, you could do some apache rewrites to map from old URL structures to new URL structures.
Hmmm, I never thought of using a category/subcategory/title structure. I know I’ve seen that structure in use but never really thought of using it myself. Although, that probably wouldn’t do a whole lot in terms of not having to worry about duplicate titles because if you write a post with the same title, it’s probably going to be in the same category and subcategory.
I think from an seo standpoint, the way mentioned by Martin above is a good way to do it. I hadn’t ever thought of doing it this way until a friend showed me how he did his blogs using /category/postname/
I have several sites where I went with the
/archives/postname/ structure, but I probably won’t do that in the future. However, the one advantage to the /archive/ structure is that if you turn your site into something other than a blog later, you can keep the articles naturally grouped together in one place.
I use the year/month/title structure, but I agree with Martin that a category/title structure may be better for SEO purposes. My URLs do have a tendency to look dated, for better or for worse.
Also, you can chance your URL structure in WordPress through the control panel, but you need to update your .htaccess file so the proper 301 redirects are in place.
I knew it could be changed in the control panel and that would change the way the url of a given post shows up in a user’s browser, but is it really possible to put in some sort of “automatic” redirect in the .htaccess that would take care of all the direct links to specific posts? I was unaware such a thing existed.
I don’t know enough about WordPress’ redirection options to comment on those…
However, at worst, you could generate a 301 Redirect statement for your .htaccess for each post, to redirect from your old URLs to new URLs. It shouldn’t be too hard to generate a list of your posts (ie, from the db), determine the old and new URLs, and then generate the redirect statements.
However, I suspect WordPress will probably handle the redirects a little more cleanly and with less effort.
I have the /%postname%/ just like you, and for all intents and purposes, it is considered the best way by many.
I never redirected anything, as I didn’t know how then, but the only “problem” is that your links in search engines will be screwy until the next indexing…which shouldn’t be very long anyway.
There is actually a plugin, “redirection”, which will do it all for youy if you want.
I’m curious though, why would you want two posts with EXACTLY the same name?
I agree that for most purposes, the method that you and I use is probably among the best, but how much better is it than the others and what kind of drawbacks are there?
In response to your question, it’s not so much that I would want two posts with the same name, but I can certainly see a potential for that happening. For example, if I go to the lake on some random summer weekend and blog about it when I get home with the title “Weekend Outing to the Lake” and then next year or the year after (or maybe even farther into the future) I go to the lake and blog about it not thinking about the time before and use the title “Weekend Outing to the Lake”.
That is just one example of how two posts might get the same title and I’m just wondering what kind of effects that would have or what might happen since the permalink would be the same for both (or does Wordpress have something that protects against that).
The big time drawback to adding the category in it, is if you (like me) tend to change/switch around category names…..massive headaches will ensue.
I see what you mean now about same post titles, and it is indeed an intriguing question….might be perfect for the WP forums.
@Dennis: that’s why it’s important to decide on your category structure up-front, as changing the category structure requires redirects to ensure you’re not losing visitors.
There’s some very useful info on choosing categories in this How to Choose Categories for Your Blog post on ProBlogger.
eh I’m finicky, always thinking bigger and better on the fly.
So far everyone is right about the headaches that you’ll face if you change your permalink structure. Sure, Google and the other search engines will eventually catch up, and you can use plugins like “Redirection” to automatically direct people and bots to the new location, but you’ll take a hit on Google Juice (PR) and might even get slapped by the smaller search engines.
Aside from that, there shouldn’t be too many problems
Regarding the “right kind” of permalink structure, there are quite a few articles out there by pro bloggers who swear by the /category/post-name for SEO purposes, but it doesn’t really appeal to me visually … so whatever floats your boat on this one. If you’re using All-In-One SEO or other tools like that, you might not even need to worry too much about the address. Just look at how many articles from forums appear in a Google results page and you’ll see what I mean.
As for your question about having two posts with the same name, WordPress can handle this already. The second post gets a “-2″ slapped on the end of the link, and the third gets a “-3″. There is no possible way (that I’ve seen) to have two posts with the exact same address, even if they have the same title
Let me know if you have any questions about this stuff. While I’m not quite an uber pro, I’ve done enough work with open source packages and SEO to answer most of the novice and intermediate-level questions.
@Jason: if the redirects are done correctly, there will be no impact to your Google PR. Similarly, any search engine hits to the old URLs will be transparently redirected to the new URLs, so it won’t affect search engines or any other pages that link to specific posts on your blog.
Thanks for answering that question about duplicate post titles, that I think was the thing that was bothering me the most.
I also use the /%postname%/ method..bec you know too long urls are also not nice…so if u got a category called ‘holy places’ and a post named ‘Santhome Basilica Cathedral - Chennai, India ‘, then ur url will be
“www.yoursitename.com/holy-places/santhome basilica-cathedral-chennai-india”
which I think is pretty long..so acc to my opinion, the /%postname%/ method will do as u get a short n relevent url also.
That is a really good point. I have one site that the url, including the www, is 29 letters long. I am always having to shorten the urls and really would have been better off just using numbers.
Honestly, now that I am thinking about it, I will probably go back and use numbers while it is still kind of manageable. I could go with /category/postnumber/ and still maintain a little seo.
It is amazing what thinking ‘out loud’ can do for you…
hey Nick,
I followed you over here from your comment on the Canadian Club post (because of your post title - you must know what you’re doing). You’d better not be winning my schwag!
I think you have the best structure. I picked the date then name structure, and wish I’d gone with just the name structure. That said, I don’t think it matters much at all. The only structure I’d bother changing from is the post number structure. Otherwise, there are much more important things to worry about.
~ Steve, aka the trade show guru
PS. Hey, I see Dennis Edell above. Man, that guy is everywhere!
Steve, thanks for stopping by. After reading the feedback I have gotten on this post, I think I will stay with the structure that I already have. In the future, I will probably also continue to use this structure on other sites I set up. I agree that all-in-all it’s probably not that big of a deal and there are other things that are more important, however, when setting up a new site there’s no reason not to go for the best possible option
Yeah, Dennis has been on quite a few sites lately, he’s been a great contributor here.
Boo.